Patricia Piccinini: We Are Connected will draw visitors into a strange and wondrous reality where animal-human hybrids exist. Staged in collaboration with the Institute for Culture Exchange, Germany, this exhibition brings together more than 40 important artworks, making this Patricia Piccinini’s first major solo showcase in Southeast Asia.
Regarded as one of the world’s leading contemporary artists, Patricia Piccinini has spent the last three decades exploring the evolving relationship between humans and nature, especially in the face of biotechnology advances such as genetic engineering. Her menagerie of strange yet alluring sculptures embrace the possibilities of ever-changing human bodies and lifeforms that straddle the artificial and natural, emerging from today’s technological age.
The show explores Piccinini’s use of silicone, fibre glass, resin, and unorthodox components like human hair, all woven together to create her hyper-realistic creations. Despite appearing unsettling and alien, the sculptures in the exhibition have a surprising warmth, juxtaposed in unusual ways to create intimate narratives that depict the hybrid creatures interacting in loving and empathic ways.
Several of the artworks emphasise the bioethical challenges associated with humankind’s manipulation of nature, highlighting relevant issues such as existence, climate change and technology. By confronting issues such as DNA editing, cloning, interspecies connections, scientific intervention, evolution, and their roles in our present and future, messages of empathy and care are communicated for not only the creatures and plants that we share this earth with, but also those yet to come. Visitors are encouraged to reconsider how they relate to others, as well as contemplate kinship and beauty through a different perspective when confronted with the unfamiliar.
The exhibition features works by Patricia Piccinini from the early 2000s through to 2021 and is divided into six main sections presenting a variety of sculptures, installations, videos and collages. One of the artworks included in the exhibition: The Young Family (2003), was featured in her show at the Australian Pavilion during the 50th Venice Biennale.
Venue: ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands
When: 5 Aug 2022 - 29 Jan 2023, 10am - 7pm
By: ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands
